The Taichung Green Museumbrary—new contemporary art museum and public library complex in Taichung, Taiwan, that may count as the first institution ever to have a portmanteau for a name—opens tomorrow. The long-awaited institution houses both the Taichung Art Museum and the Taichung Public Library, both of which will be connected by a roof garden known as the Culture Forest.
“This integrated design reflects the museum and library’s vision of learning as a shared, living practice,” Yi-Hsin Lai, the inaugural director of the Taichung Art Museum, told the Art Newspaper.
The complex, set within the city’s 165-acre Central Park, is on the site of a former military base and airport. The Museumbrary was designed by the Japanese architecture firm SANAA and Taiwan’s Ricky Liu & Associates Architects + Planners. It is made of up eight glass-and-metal cube-shaped structures clad in a white mesh façade. (One of SANAA’s earliest museum commissions was the New Museum in New York, which opened its Bowery building in 2007 and is also known for its distinctive aluminum mesh facade.)
Site-specific artworks by Haegue Yang and Michael Lin were commissioned by the museum and will be on view through December 2027. The Taichung Art Museum’s inaugural exhibition, “A Call of All Beings: See you tomorrow, same time, same place,” includes work by a ranger of Taiwanese and international artists, both contemporary and historical.
